by Aya DeAniege
“Because they expect nothing to happen,” Sera said with a desperate sort of laugh.
“Exactly,” I said. “Why, are you atheist?”
“I am,” she said.
“That’s weird, so’s Grace,” I muttered.
“Why is that weird?” Sera asked.
“Uh… when Sam ripped his heart out it stayed out,” I said. “Baal caused a lot of problems so to fix it finally, because Sam wouldn’t do anything—and it was hard to get Baal moving on doing something stupid enough that Sam would actually do something about it—Heaven took his grace and put it into the form of a human that died before its first breath, giving life where there was none.”
“She’s literally grace,” Sera said.
“Exactly.”
“Then what would that make me?” she asked.
I shrugged and turned to her. “Raphael and I have bickered over things for a long time. It’s not really surprising that we are fighting over you. Look at you. Attractive, sexually know exactly what you want. Not running and screaming at the topic of this conversation.”
That alone was reason enough to stuff Raphael into a barrel and throw him into the ocean somewhere. He’d wash ashore in about seventy years, and I would have had my time with Sera. It would also end all the fighting for that amount of time considering the fact that Raphael got lost quickly and couldn’t navigate the astral plane as well as the rest of us.
“I’ve heard crazier,” she said.
“I’m not crazy,” I said.
“Normally the crazy ones protest loudly that they aren’t crazy,” she said, her voice lowering as she considered her wine glass.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Does it make me weird that I want to have sex with you because I might be able to brag about having sex with an angel?”
“A little weird,” I said. “Though, I don’t think you’d be the first human to make such a claim or to sleep with a man so that she could make such a comment.”
“Can… can I try it?”
“Technically you’ve already had sex with an angel,” I said.
“Yeah, Raphael. A healer. That does explain why I really want to see him under you though. The universe has practically made him your bitch.”
“Raphael can be dominant and scary,” I said.
“Like when?” she asked.
I bit my tongue rather than answer.
Not only were we not supposed to talk about that time, I didn’t want to. Certainly not to Sera. I didn’t want to throw Raphael under a bus right then. Sure, it might reflect poorly on me, but it’d also be a dick thing to do. I was almost certain that he had been presented with just such an opportunity the night before and he hadn’t taken it because there Sera was.
I could not return his kindness with a blade of my own.
“I would love to have Michael, the sword-bearer and warrior of Heaven, have his way with me as if I were a trophy he won on the battlefield.”
Somehow, that works.
I rose to the occasion, hard and needing at her words and I couldn’t even say why. I had had women in the past who proclaimed that I was conquering hero, and that had never happened before.
“You do have a… big sword, don’t you?” she asked with a knowing little smile.
“My sword is nearly of a height with me,” I said in confusion.
“That’s not the sword I’m talking about,” she said as she shifted toward me.
Her free hand slipped over my side and settled between my legs. Through the fabric of my pants, she stroked me. The heat of her sent a tingle through me. I bent toward her, giving in as she crossed the distance between us and captured my lips with her own.
I had been with forward women before, but I had never been with a woman like her before. She claimed my mouth as her own, tongue thrusting between my teeth as she climbed on top of me. She slipped the wine glass out of my hand and set it to the side as she pushed me down with her other hand.
“Now, you just lay there. Unless this was why Lillith really got kicked out of the garden.”
“She’s asexual, so no, no it is not,” I said, biting my bottom lip as she ground against me. “No woman would be kicked out of anywhere for that.”
She glanced around us, then focused on me.
“Is this private?” she asked.
“I’m the only gardener here,” I said.
She smiled. “Really? You’re so productive. It’s gorgeous.”
Sera stood and unbuttoned her pants, kicking them to the side as I watched. Her underwear followed suit, and then she straddled me again. As she bent to kiss me, she hesitated.
“Is this too much?” she asked.
“No, it’s not too much,” I said.
“Good,” she whispered before she kissed me again.
Her hands slipped between us and pulled my pants open with practiced ease. By the time I realized what was going on, she was settled back on me, claiming every inch of me. The heated wetness of her surrounded me.
My heart skipped a beat as I looked up at her, my hands tangling in her hair.
I had done it so often with humans, yet was surprised as she took control from me and began riding me. Each motion of her stole my breath away, every kiss of her lips gave it back to me. I was lost in every feeling that was Sera.
I moaned as we kissed.
And then we did what I swore to never do with a human. Sharing those most intimate moments seems sinful. She gave me a gift I could never repay and yet asked nothing in return.
As we lay on the picnic blanket afterward, basking in the glow of it all, I sighed out just slightly. It was so different than I thought it would be, and yet what so many people had told me would happen.
“Dinner and a movie,” Sera said.
“What?” I asked.
“I’ve never been to dinner and a movie,” she said.
“Okay,” I said with an almost sigh because I was still panting. “You pick the movie. I’ll pick the restaurant.”
“Nothing too fancy,” she said.
“Star wise?” I asked. “Are we talking a one or a three?”
“No higher than three,” she said. “I do not have a five-star dress unless you want to see me in the same thing as last night.”
“I would, but I know women don’t like wearing the same thing so often,” I said. “I’ll find a nice establishment that you can wear a regular dress to and you pick a movie that, please, is not a documentary or a war movie.”
“Fantasy romance, I was thinking.”
“Might be fun,” I said.
“It’s a date,” she said with a little giggle as she rolled toward me.
I left the estate just after noon. It was a little after Sera arrived, I knew, but I had also planned it like that. She would be safer on the estate while I investigated the tattoo parlour. Magic and demons both had difficulty getting into the estate, and Michael would get Sera to safety if something happened.
That was why I had waited until she had arrived, and I was sure that she and Michael were wrapped up with one another. That way, there was less of a chance of her leaving or running off.
It had nothing to do with hoping she would ask for me when she arrived or hoping that we’d run into one another on my way out. Nothing like that at all.
Maybe if I keep repeating that, it’ll come true.
I drove downtown, went to the cafe, and then went around the corner to where she had said the parlour was. I parked across the street from where the shop was supposed to be and turned off my car. Finding the Wiccan shop was simple.
It may have been three years since I had gone looking for that shop, but it seemed just the same. Just as clean as the day it had opened, the signs in its windows untouched from the fading that the sun could cause.
Witches liked to use magic to upkeep their shops, but it gave them a certain quality. Like the air around them had been scrubbed clean of everything dirty.
There it was, still as evid
ent as ever.
Sitting across from the shop, I stared into it, wondering if they knew what happened downstairs. Humans didn’t always lease a whole building for their shops. Sometimes it was just the top or the bottom that was rented out. Just because the witches upstairs were registered, didn’t mean that the witches downstairs were, or even that the witches upstairs knew that the downstairs was rented to witches.
That was the thing with witches. They were like a massive extended family. If they grew up together or were introduced one another, they would recognize they were both witches. Otherwise, it took witnessing the other witch using their magic or noticing the side effects of spells.
By setting up under a Wiccan shop, the ones in the basement may have used the top shop’s runoff of magic to cover whatever they did.
Playing with my keys, I watched the building upstairs.
Can’t just…
“Yeah, I know,” I said to no one in particular.
I slipped out of the car and headed across the street, dodging a car as I went. In the wiccan shop, I stepped up the counter and looked at the woman behind it, who stared at me with wide eyes.
“Are you a dark witch?” I asked.
I already knew the answer, because I had seen her before the witch council. I knew it was possible to fake the tests the witch council put everyone through, but it was very complicated.
And, let’s face it, I had spied on her on more than one occasion.
“No,” she said, giving her head a little shake.
It sent her curls, tips died in a bright blue, bouncing as her face almost seemed to scrunch up. Others might have thought she was being weak, but I knew that the stillness of her hands on the counter were signs of her readiness to attack. Her voice was soft, and she was definitely an adorable little creature.
She manned the counter because no one looked at her and thought she was a powerful witch.
“I suggest you report to the council,” I whispered, in case of spying spells. “And close your shop as you go.”
I then left the shop and lit up a smoke on the sidewalk. It was a little self-destructive, true, but it also gave the witch the time she needed. She knew how long a smoke took, approximately, and knew that once I was done with said smoke, I was going to do something destructive. Smokes made great timers.
While there were no no-smoking signs around, I did have several people pass me, casting me scowls as they went. I was not blowing the smoke into their path, however. When I saw someone coming, I turned my head and blew into the wind in such a way that it did not hit the pedestrian.
As I finished the smoke, the woman who had been manning the till of the Wiccan shop walked out and locked the door. She left, headed up the road, away from me as she pulled out her phone. Possibly making a call, maybe to the owner of the shop.
Who could very well be downstairs.
I glanced around. Grimacing halfway through the motion of flicking my cigarette away from myself, I lifted my foot and put it out on the bottom of my shoe instead. Then I dropped the butt into a nearby trash receptacle rather than flicking it into the road and looking cool.
With another glance around, this time to look to see if anything was trying to creep up on me, I went down the steps to the bottom level of the shop. I glanced at the random branding on the door that protested it was a tattoo parlour. It didn’t just exist, it complained, spelled from inside the paint on the window.
Stepping into the parlour, I felt the change.
Magic saturated the air. That saturation slowed down time and movement of mortals without magic. In the moments of stepping inside the door, I reacted as a regular human would. I stood there and shifted my attention ever so slowly as the creatures of the night bolted, leaving trails of smoke behind them as they ran.
Dark witches worked with demons sometimes. Parts of their magic involved demons, but the only way to bring that into the real world was to use the grace of an angel. It was my understanding that demons participated in the hopes that demons could one day be pulled into the physical plane without ripping a hole in existence that would be noticed by myself and the others.
By the time I looked at the counter, a woman with almost white foundation and seriously too much eyeliner was standing behind the counter, chewing gum like a cow chewing cud.
“Yeah?” she asked between chews.
That was the point where I played the ‘mortal or witch’ game. Only for a few seconds, however, then I decided it wasn’t worth the effort. If she was in the parlour, she was probably involved and thought that she was training to be a dark witch and being a familiar was just as bad as being a dark witch.
I turned, grabbed one of the dark creatures and slammed it into the wall. The shadow and smoke struggled but was stuck as I pulled my halberd from the astral plane and gutted the creature before allowing him to drop to the floor.
The palm of my hand lit up almost like it had been asleep and was suddenly waking up. It was almost painful.
“Hm,” I grunted as I turned to the woman behind the counter. “That was oddly tingly.”
She was staring at the weapon with wide eyes and an open mouth. Her gum fell out of her mouth and bounced over the counter.
I looked down at my weapon, lifted it, and then looked up at her.
“This is my pointy friend,” I said.
Samael had a spear, and Michael had a sword. They at least had weapons mortals recognized by name alone. Humans would see my weapon and recognize it on an instinctual level, but tell them the name and they’d frown in confusion. Or they’d hear it in reference to my name and think it was a crop or something.
It was, in unkind terms, an axe on the end of a spear with the point of the spear still attached to it. My weapon was just as well cared for as Samael and Michael’s, but used so little that it still carried its original edge to it. It could cut through anything, causing agony in the highest of demons, and rending apart lower creatures.
I swung the weapon upward, pointing it at the cashier.
“Are you a dark witch?” I demanded.
“No,” she said, “I just make minimum wage, man, I have nothing to do with anything.”
“You’d best leave then.”
She bolted for the door, headed around me. Likely she would be too afraid to say or do anything. If she did tell someone, what would she do? Give my description and claim I went all murderous rage in a tattoo parlour in the downtown area after pulling a magical blade from thin air?
Who would believe her?
I do love humans being so stupid.
As she bolted, a woman came out of the back. She had a cloth in her hands and was wiping them on the fabric. Wiping something off of them, though I was uncertain what.
She didn’t seem surprised to see me in the least, though her eyebrows raised slightly as she bent around me, looking after the cashier. With an annoyed sound, she focused her attention on me.
“Raphael,” she said. “Must be with that weapon in your hands. What does the weakest son of God want with us? We are but humble servants.”
“Who have demigorgons manning the front?” I asked.
The woman shrugged as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
“They work for cheaper than demons do,” she said, setting a hand on the counter.
There must have been a spell on the counter, just as there was a spell or sixteen in the back, slowly lighting up as I stood in the front, my eyes on the woman.
Her primary goal would be to try to capture me. Preferably, to pluck my wings and steal my grace. It was the same thing every dark witch in the past had tried to do, and every one of them had failed.
Yet still, they repeated the futile gesture.
“And what would you like?” she asked.
She moved around the counter and began flipping through an appointment book as if I were nothing more than a client who had asked about an opening. I watched her flipping through the pages and wondered if dark witches were not as dangerous as Micha
el had made them seem.
Maybe they just got stupid.
Then I dismissed the thought and focused entirely on her because I would not allow her to take advantage of me.
“A woman showed up to my brother’s marriage with a tattoo on her back.”
“Of?”
Her tone was dripping with acid. She did not look up as she asked the question, though I noticed the hesitance of the pages moving. She knew what I meant even before I said it, but she wanted me to say it before she reacted.
“You know what they were,” I said. “Wings. Angel wings.”
“We’ve done many wings. Angel wings are quite popular, much like the dandelion and birds. Angel wings are popular, which pair are you speaking of?”
“The pair of actual, real angel wings that you bound to the soul of a mortal woman with magic ink,” I said.
She finally looked up at me. There was a burning hatred in her eyes as she continued to stare and I merely watched her in response. She seemed to squint as if trying to judge my motives from that alone.
I think it should have been obvious, what my motive was. They had stolen a pair of wings and done something devious with them. It didn’t take much thought at all.
“What of those wings?” she asked.
“Well, the more important question would be how you managed to get your hands on the wings of an angel.”
“Are they your wings?” she asked. “If they aren’t your wings, please leave. You have no proof that we stole anything. Send the owner of the wings with a complaint, and we might return them to the angel, though I doubt you will find one to complain because no theft happened.”
She said it like she was quoting their return policy to an irritated customer. Short and blunt, with an edge to her voice.
“How did you come by the wings if not theft?” I asked. “Who do they belong to?”
“None of your concern, angel.”
We scowled at one another. I glanced back at the door, then took a step deeper into the parlour. I felt the spells winding around me, begging me to make that move and I did it to give the appearance of being under their power. I wanted them lulled into a sense of security before I put my blade into their throats.
